May 10, 2010

Well not much is new since I talked with you all yesterday....but it was sure fun to chat it up with ya'all!

Well, the baptism yesterday really rocked it! I am super super excited that I may have the opportunity to attend the Sealing of the Cabrera Family, since now their entire family is members of our beautiful church. I hope that it is in one year, because in that case I will get to go for sure!!!!! YIPEEEE! It was also so wonderful watching his eldest son Genesis baptize his father. It was really touching and I loved watching it and being a part of the process. I LOVE THIS WORK!!!!! Their other 2 sons Isaac and Daniel are also so cute and I just love their family. It has been a real treat working with them.

I just need to reiterate how much I love life. I have been really realizing the beauty in life and ESPECIALLY living Righteously... therein is where true happiness really does lie. I am so grateful to be a part of this work and to be living my life to the best of my ability. It really is so awesome!

May 4, 2010

This week was wonderful!!!!! This week is Mothers day which means that I get to call you all!!!! YEAH!!!!! I don't know what time for that for sure but it will be on sunday sometime after we get done with church...and we end at 2:30....and we are 2 hours ahead of you. So be prepared because I cannot wait to talk to you all!!!!!

This week rocked it!

The baptism for Jose was amazing! It was so great watching him come out of the waters of baptism! I LOVED IT! Things are wonderful here! I just adore Jose....he is so sweet and I feel like he is my little brother of something really special like that. He was so excited and I took tons of pics that you will be able to see after the transfer!!!!

Life is so great here....and I think that I am over my hard week! PHEW! My comps were super patient and nice to me....cuz I was so frustrated with spanish... but then I decided to trust in the Lord, and things are wonderful again! The baptisms this week really helped and also, it helps that in 2 weeks we have an apostle coming to talk to us!!!! Elder Christensen!!!!

And this coming weekend we have another baptism!!!! I am so excited again! It will be so great! Brother Cabrera! His family are all members and he decided that he wanted us to teach him, and now he is joining the church! It is so great and I am so thrilled to be a part of this great work!

Well, life is awesome and I love everything. Many great things are hap[pening here and I am loving the chance to serve. My testimony has been really growning and I know this church is true.....I have always known that. Also, personal revelation is so very important. I am learning so much about that. It is super important that we learn it and implement it into our lives!

April 26, 2010

I love you all so so so much! I am so sorry that I have NO time to e-mail today, but I really love you.

Here is a quick update: Jose is getting baptized on Sat!!!! so awesome huh?!?!? I am very excited! Also, I did not get transfered and none of my companions did either! We are all together for another 6 weeks!

Well, I am happy and well. I am pretty stressed right now and typing really fast and gotta run...but I love you so much!!!!!

April 19, 2010

So, this week has been wonderful!!!!! As always! I am loving it here in Tampa. Next week is transfers and I am praying that I will be able to stay in Tampa right here, and with both my comps, because I love and adore them sososososososo much! Anyways, the week has been wonderful!

It has been a wonderful week and our investigator Jose is doing so amazing! He is such a golden investigator! I am loving working with him! It is a true joy! We found him while tracting two weeks ago wednesday, and he is just coming along so fast. He was so ready to find the truth. He has a baptismal date for the first week of May and I would love to be here for it! It will be my 3rd baptism. He is my favorite though. I feel such a new and mothering type of love for him....it is different than anything I have ever really known before. I just want to shelter him from the world....and when he prays in the lessons, I find myself opening my eyes to watch him because I think that it is so precious. He is from Chiapus, Mexico. he is 22 years old and he is planning on returning soon. I hope that he can take the gospel back with him and share it with his entire family.

We went to see him (he lives in the GHETTO) on sunday and his roommates were all super drunk. They came outside and were getting really close to us and telling us elaborate drunken stories in slurred spanish.....it was really interesting and entertaining. But he was so embarrassed about it, and it was really sweet to see him care so much about the way that people treat us, and the way that he appears to us. He says that he sees us as messengers from God, and that he has been waiting for this his whole life. He is like a little innocent baby. I don't even see how he has been around these types of things his entire life. I would really love to be here for his baptism. He is really a special little guy.

April 12, 2010

First of all let me say that this week has been great! And to answer all of your questions: yes I got that big box my first p-day here! Thank you so very much for sending that. I really appreciate it.

So, now I want to tell you all about my week. First of all, we started teaching this most amazing and wonderful investigator this week! His name is Jose and he is so receptive to our message. He is so excited and coming to everything. I have really tried to teach him alot in spanish and my comps say that I am learning more and more spanish and that I am getting better....but I think that I am learning really slowly and it really irritates me. You are right about needing to speak more spanish....even while we are at home or tracting.....usually we talk in english and have fun, but it would be better to try to learn the language. So I am really excited about Jose!!!!

Ok and the miracle of the week is so wonderful!!!! My comps were teaching a woman named Yolanda for a while before I came out....and she was not receptive to the message, and her daughter is against the church and so Yolanda had asked us to stop coming over.....so I had not even met her out here yet. Then last week we called her, and set up a quick appt. for Sat. I had the idea to try and teach to the urgency of the message that we are teaching....so I suggested that we teach about Joseph Smith and his conviction and willingness to give up everything in order to restore the truth. We read from Joseph Smith history verses 24 and 25. After we read it, Yolanda said that she understood why we were sharing that with her.... and that she felt the need to be baptized very strongly. We asked her when she wanted to be baptized and she said, "Manana." which means tomorrow! So, yesterday we had a baptism! My second one in the field so far! It was super amazing! She was so happy, and we were even able to get one of the recent converts that we work with and teach to perform the baptism. His name is Juan Hernandez Lopez. It was so so so so so special. She absolutely loved it! She was so happy and was just glowing. She came out after she was dressed and bore her testimony with such strong conviction. It made me feel the spirit so much. Then in fast and testimony meeting she bore her testimony again....and she thanked us for coming over to visit her the day before (Saturday) and helping her understand that she needed to be baptized. It was remarkable and a true miracle.... and I have been praying everyday this week for a miracle. My comp. said that it is a "greenie miracle" because I am a greenie and I am with them. It was amazing and very special.

April 5, 2010

I LOVE YOU ALL so so so much! Mom and Dad, thank you so very much for the Easter package! It was perfect because I recieved it on Saturday so it was perfect timing so I had it for the holiday! It really helped to make me feel so loved....not that I have a problem feeling loved by you or anything :) haha! Thank you! I also looked for you all in conference on the sunday afternoon session! I looked and looked but I did not see you....but when it was scanning the entire congregation I whispered every couple seconds that I loved you so that I for sure got ya wherever you were sitting :) haha!

Well, this week has been good. We are working hard and contacted 152 people last week and taught 20 lessons so that it really good! :) The work is fun! In one lesson we were teaching 2 sisters whose names are Maribel and Gisella and also Gisella's little baby Mathew. We watched the short Joseph Smith movie and then my comps were teaching the lesson. During the lesson I felt the overwhelming feeling that I needed to bear my testimony about Joseph Smith....even though I was not sure if we were all still talking about Joseph Smith. I could not find a minute to interject, so I told Hma. Kortsen and she said that she would say that I wanted to say something....finally she was able to and I was able to bear my testimony in spanish that was actually making a bit of sense about Joseph Smith. I was so overcome by the spirit that I began to cry. The 2 women said, "that is the way that I want to feel about this. If i felt that way then there would be nothing that could hold me back from joining the church." Then they started to ask me questions about my conversion story and I was able to kinda answer them in spanish....it was not perfect, but I really seemed to help the lesson. It was because the spirit was litterally urging me (with urgency) that I NEEDED to bear my testimony right then. I am glad that I followed the prompting. Also, last night in a lesson the spirit was so strong and I understood most of what was said by both my companion and the woman who we were teaching. It was incredible. The language is slowly but surely starting to come.....little by little. haha! It is so great! I am really excited and I know that it is only through the power of the Lord.

I also loved conference this weekend and I learned so much! I loved Elder Holland's talk so much too, Dad! He is so powerful huh?!?!?!? The Prophet's talk was so nice as well. We had our investigator's Gisella and Maribel come so that was a real treat!

March 29, 2010

You will be happy to hear that I am actually doing really well! :) You were right about everything....the field is about 4 trillion times better than the MTC. I love my 2 companions! I have been learning so much from them....

I adore my companions!!!! Hermana Murray is from Seattle. She is great! She is an architecture major and goes to a university in Oregon. She has been in the field for a year now. She is nice and helps me a lot! She is a very hard worker and a great missionary. Hermana Kortsen is my other companion and she is really pretty and tall, thin, and athletic. She is from Hollister, California. She is like your typical Californian I think. she is super into healthy foods, loves to do all kinds of sports and outdoorsy things. She is really funny and really nice. I just love her! She has been out here for 9 months now. They are so nice. I think that the Lord relaly heard and answered my prayer to get a good first companion, and gave me 2! :) We all get along well, and last night we stayed up until like midnight just talking...and I really enjoyed it.

Saturday was my first baptism!!! It was really exciting! His name is Mario Escobar, and it was wonderful and amazing! The speaker did not show up so the bishop asked me to speak at the baptism!!! I did most of it in spanish and then Hermana Kortsen translated the last little bit for me in english, because I wanted to share a little about my baptismal day...and I did not know all the words :) Then on Sunday, all 3 of us and the 2 elders in our ward were asked to speak in sacrament!!!! I prepared a talk with help from Hermana Murray, and I just stood up there and I read the entire thing! it was really exciting to be honest. :)

I did have one troubled moment...yesterday after church we ate at a members house, and while we were there I started getting really down. Then, I prayed that it would go away....and soon after the sister who lived there Hermana Horn started telling us a really sad story about her daughter and I got really involved in helping her...so I forgot about feeling sad and I helped her the best I could. Afterwards I told my companions how I was feeling, and they comforted me and told me that it happens a lot, and I am not weird and it will get easier. Then Hermana Murray said that soon it will change from being sad cuz I feel like I am going to be out here forever, to feeling sad cuz I don't feel like I have enough time left. They are both so kind and helpful. We are all 3 pretty different. But we really work great together.

2 funny things happened that I can think of right now.....I wrote about them both in the letter too....the first was the first night I was here...and Hermana Murray asked me to bear my testimony about baptism. When we were in the lesson she looked at me and nodded so I knew that it was time, and I FROZE! All I could remember in spanish was, "Baptism is very important in my life..(pause)..yes." haha! it was really funny and awkward! The the other was last night..... I shook one of our new members hands after the activity and I meant to say "nos vemos" which mean "we'll see you" but what came out was "Me gusta" which means I like you. I didn't even notice that I had said the compleltey wrong thing.....so he kinda looked at me weird....and said "ah yes, Sister. gracias." hahaha! Then I tried to explain that it was not what I had intended to say...and he helped me find a new way to phrase it! haha! It was classic.

There are lots of funny things that happen out here. The spanish is hard, but seems to be coming along. It is really great.

All the mail gets sent to our mission office and then they forward it on to us...that way it always gets to us....even when we move around. so send it to that address. i think that it is that one that I gave you on Dale Mabry. :) The apt is so nice! complete with workout room and there is a washer and dryer in our apt! I love it! and we have our own car! it is funny cuz there has to be a "backer" so one of us has to stand behind the driver and make hand signals in order to guide her although she needs no help of course. haha! it funny to run over and do like a bigh "STOP" signal and kinda scare her... Hermana Kortsen does that sometimes. It is funny! It is especially fun when we are in a crowded parking lot and we look like big dorks! haha! My comps made me get out and do it when we were pulling out of a crowdded Mexican apt complex and all the little Mexicans looked at me really strangely! It was funny!